Western Short StoryHooligan Hide-out Tom Sheehan

The
trap, without the slightest hint obvious, was already set, and Kate
Osgood, studying one strange and suspicious rider, was in turn
studied by another rider she did not know, behind her, above her.

Kate
Osgood, on her red sorrel on one rim of Los Gatos Canyon, stared down
at the floor of the canyon studying the lone rider roaming the area
as if lost. Or, came a second thought, as if he was searching for the
secret exit from Spider’s Valley, location of the Kay-Bar-Kay
Ranch, her home for the past 15 years. The ranch, and the valley, was
now hers since her father had been killed, in error, by a misguided
posse just a few weeks earlier.

The
rider had discerning traits and character moves that she’d be able
to pick out later on, by her system of personal identity that was
pretty solid. Kate would know him arriving in town, riding lead or
drag on a drive, approaching her at the ranch on horseback with
flowers in his hand. On a classic paint, the horseman rode with one
shoulder somewhat ahead of the other, the right, as though he’d be
looking behind him so often it was best to be part ways there all the
time. He exhibited that tendency a number of times in his search.

When
the rider kept the reins in his right hand, she assumed him to be a
lefty, the left hand ready to draw his weapon if needed.

“This
one’s a lefty, Joe,” she said to her horse, “so remember that.”
She patted him in a salute of trust and loyalty. “Oh, good horse, I
wonder what Toby Booker would say about him, if he’d look at him
like we do?” The subsequent smile gleamed on her face as the rider
took off his hat and scratched his head. Toby, she’d quickly admit,
was not a second thought type of acquaintance. Her only question,
never having seen him in action, was would he be able to handle some
normal adversity. Heaven knows, there was enough of it floating
about. You could stab it with a jack knife if you were at all alert
to the full life going on in this part of the country.

The
rider seemed in a quandary, as if he could not find the exit from the
valley … meaning, she realized, he might have been here before, one
of the various intruders over the years who had might have slipped
from the valley strictly by accident or in a desperate flight from
the law … or who might have been escorted pronto from the ranch
property by her father.

Suddenly,
Kate’s suspicion was aroused as the thought hit home, and she
shifted into anger. Why was the world like this, its people
scrounging around for a dead man’s property, trying to exercise new
rights over old land, trying for easy pickings from a girl? She
slapped the pistol at her side in a determined reaction. This was her
heritage, her legacy. She’d fight to keep it that way. The rumors
floating all about town and across the grass to some of the other
ranches had bothered her from the first day. They loomed so unfair,
the cheaters lining up to grab from a supposedly helpless girl her
birthright, the choicest valley in the whole mountain chain. Nothing
else measured up to it.

Back
in the beginning, her father knew the value of the valley the moment
he saw it unfold before him, his mule on its last legs, his water
gone and his ammunition spent. His spirits had shortly before fallen
downhill so fast he feared he’d never get back to the wagon where
Kate and her mother were hidden in a small dead end canyon a few
miles away. He had arrived here through a maze of rocks and mountain
fissures cracked open by Mother Nature in an escarpment that rose
more than 500 feet, like the side of a huge barn. The way proved to
be the door to Utopia.

Life
had changed in one look, for at that exact minute a spider slipped
down past his eyes on a gossamer thread to land on his sleeve, and so
he called the place Spider’s Valley.

This
was her land, Spider’s Valley. She would keep it until her last
breath. She slapped the sidearm again. “It won’t be easy,
Mister,” she said aloud, the words coming from her mouth with the
depths of an oath.

Kate
knew that if the strange rider found the secret exit from Spider’s
Valley, she could come in behind him from another direction. This was
part of her father’s precautions to insure the safety of the
family, a tunnel of sorts. The tunnel, through a thousand years of
falling rocks, landslides, eruptions of cataclysmic sorts, had opened
up for him with one stick of dynamite all those years earlier. After
many trips into and out of the tunnel, Kate could pass through it
with a blindfold in place. And her father had placed a few caches of
other insurances within the tunnel, Kate being the only other person
in Creation ever to know the secret locations of weapons, ammunition
and sundry supplies

Time,
fate, and what else could expose the glories of Spider’s Valley
might now be upon her. For a long time she had dreaded a run of
people into the valley, the existence of its choice location admired
by many people, people who rarely came without invitation and
guidance. There were those, Kate realized, who would adapt the place
as a hide-out with a built-in escape route known to nobody else, if
they ever found that route. Discourage the sternest lawmen, it would.
The valley was surrounded on just about every side by high rises of
the lofty Rockies, and would naturally bar all but the direct
approach by the “front door,” as her father would always say
about visitors.

The
fates and the accidents were merging to drop their big surprise on
the young mistress of Spider’s Valley. The rider below, with a
seeming mild curiosity, dismounted and went behind a huge stone slab
and Kate knew the secret was exposed. The rider came back for his
horse, mounted again and disappeared behind the rock. He would follow
the opening into the valley. She then slipped carefully into the
tunnel, unaware of the second man watching her movements from above.

Kate’s
suspicions, of course, were right in line, but she had no idea to the
depth of the plans to take over her homestead.

Things,
all adverse to her good cheer and comfort, happened rapidly. As she
came out of a fissure in the mountain, the rider was directly in
front of her. He was a lefty, she saw, with a revolver on his left
hip. Her rifle was pointed right at him as she slowly came up behind
him and said, “You’re trespassing, Mister, so I’m chasing you
out of here. You keep your hand away from your gun and ride right
down the valley and out the other end. I don’t know what you’re
doing here, but it’s all over as of now.”

The
stranger, wide at the shoulders, thick and immoveable at the jaw, and
not fazed a bit by her rifle aimed at his mid-section, said, “Sorry
about this, lady, but we got too many plans for this place. This is
going to be our new hide-out, and there’s not a lot you can do to
stop us. We got guys all over you and all over this place. You’re
gonna keep house for us, that’s for sure.”

Kate
studied him. “I could shoot you right now, knock you right out of
your saddle, couldn’t I?”

“Then
we’d have the place without any problems, wouldn’t we?” He
pressed his lips together, nodded and added, “Doesn’t that bother
you at all, us moving in just the way the boss planned it?”

“How’d
you ever find the way in to the valley?”

“The
boss left here one day after visiting your father, saying he was
going off to see his folks back down the river, but met his dad on
the way. When he got to town with his father, your father had been in
town for almost two hours. He knew there had to be a way out of the
valley that nobody else knew about, the way your father got to town
in such a hurry. The boss figures this’d be a great place for a
hide-out with a way out just in case we needed it. Made to order, he
says, and he knows his way around.”

“Who’s
your boss?” Kate said, as an unnerving and intolerable thought came
to her.

“Oh,
you’re sure to meet up with him doing all the housekeeping he’ll
make you do to keep us comfortable. He’s got it all figured out.
That’s why he’s the boss, but you wouldn’t know it meeting him
the first time around.”

That
sick feeling Kate had felt but a moment earlier came back with a
vengeance. She ought to shoot this intruder to get ahead of them,
whoever “they” were. Her rifle was pointed with authority at the
intruder, but Kate Osgood couldn’t pull the trigger. She had never
shot at a man before; hadn’t much as aimed her rifle at a man in
all her 20 years. She tried to remember if there were any times that
she had threatened to shoot a man, but nothing of the sort came back
from her past. Everything wrong in her life was right here in front
of her … an intruder had found his way into the valley, a false
friend had intruded earlier, and her father was dead, supposedly by
an ill-advised posse. She wondered about that, felt it all piling up
on her.

Everything
in the world was wrong.

Yet
it was the other sound that commanded her attention, the click of a
trigger being cocked on a weapon. A voice behind her, another but
deeper voice, more threat in it, said, “Don’t try it, Missy, or
your ranching days are over.”

Kate
Osgood did not even turn around. Realization swiftly told her the
tunnel had been breached in her anxiety to trap the first intruder.
She had dropped her guard, had let herself be caught, and somebody
from town, some acquaintance of hers, some friend of her father’s,
was behind it all. She had to know who it was.

She
dropped her rifle.

But
she didn’t panic. Thoughts of her father filled her, his early and
steady precautions for his family, and it would be up to her to avail
herself of them at an opportune time. Obviously it was not now. More
than her own safety bothered her; her curiosity was aroused to a
compelling level. Who had cheated her father? Who had cheated her in
turn? Who would pay for all this? The eventual pay-back aroused
ferocity in her soul she had not known before.

She’d
keep her mouth shut, her eyes open, and do what she was told.

There
was a way out of all this. Did her father see all of this coming?

With
reins not in her hands, Kate Osgood was lead to the door of her home.
The flowers she had picked on the prairie sat in a pot at the front
steps, a dozen blossomed flowers with long stems and their dozen hues
waved in any breath of air … someone walking in or out, the door
opened to cause a draft of air, a hand reaching for the welcome touch
of nature. They sat proper as daylight in an old Canopic jar she had
found in the mountains. She had spent a few hours at the task of
gathering, selecting, and arranging them in their variety of colors.
She loved the sight of the blossoms showing against the dark wall of
the house. Aromas reached her as she arrived at the hitch rail. She
stared at two flowers boxes, brilliant in half a dozen hues, sitting
tight against the wall on each side of the door, at the same level of
the doorknob. Her personal statements were open and readable, by most
visitors, by all guests. Everything said care and comfort abounded at
the Kay-Bar-Kay Ranch in Spider’s Valley.

Now
it was a lie.

Even
in their brightness, the splash of colors from the flowers paled as
she dismounted. Home suddenly felt foreign, strange in a false
welcome, as though nothing would ever be the same again; a time had
passed; another time was coming, and it disheartened Kate for a short
while, until her spirit, always with her, found resurrection, leaped
with this discovery as though it was new.

The
man who had come in from behind her at the tunnel escorted into the
house, holding her roughly by the elbow at first. “You better get
busy in the kitchen, Lady, ‘cause the boss’ll want something to
eat when he shows up. He’ll be here sooner than you think. Best to
feed him quick afore he gets real angry. I don’t want him any none
angry at me, I’ll tell you.”

He
pushed her toward the kitchen, his hand lingering too long at her
backside. She shuddered.

For
sanity’s sake, Kate immediately pictured the cached goods in the
tunnel; the images saved her from panic once and would do so again.
Now she called them up for visual assurance as she heard hoof beats
coming in from the valley opening. That she might know the boss of
the gang filled her with dread; life couldn’t be any more unfair
than it was now. Up with a quick start she came; the only recent
guest she could remember coming to the ranch was Toby Booker. That
such a mild, unaggressive man could have planned all this, played his
charade to perfection, was unthinkable to her. But now she’d know
what a fool she had been to hold any secret desires about Toby. Love
was so damned foolish, she believed, as if her pain had falsely
blossomed into love by the quick absence of its possibility. She was
stupid to have held a single dream, or any such idea, of Toby Booker.
Anger moved again in her blood as the door opened.

A
breath escaped her lungs. Her heart dropped and then leaped in her
chest. It was not Toby Booker. It was not Toby Booker! How had she
been so frail in her thinking? Toby didn’t deserve any of it. The
man standing in the doorway, tall, soft in the face as though he had
been beaten down by something, his shoulders sloped and hardly
discernable in a gray shirt and a black vest, was a man she had seen
before, but always on the edges in town, like a ferret, a malingerer,
a malcontent uncomfortable alone or in a crowd. The only thing that
saved his presence was the stolen, molten blue of his eyes looking at
her without a bit of anger or shame. They were eyes that could
measure things generally unseen, that could reach down into her soul
and expose her thoughts, her intentions, enforce demands.

“I’m
going to say this to you once, Fancy Lady … I’ll kill the first
person who comes to the ranch and you try to give them any messages
or cry for help. You’re now working for me, and I’m damned
hungry. You get something to eat for me and a few of the boys, all my
boys. Your small crew was been taken care of while you were prancing
around the country like you owned it all. No more, Fancy Lady, no
more. One of us will be sitting with you as we go about your business
here and our business out in the world of finances.” Distastefully,
he emitted a vulgar chuckle from deep in his throat as though it was
being scraped across a corrugated board.

Kate,
pride and thanks in hand, swallowed a whole lot, took deep her thanks
that it was not Toby Booker making demands on her. She’d have some
freedom of movement about the ranch as long as she stayed alert for
an escape attempt. Sometime, with patience and planning her father
was so good at, she’d make a move to reach arms, find help, get rid
of the reins holding her in place, perhaps say some words to Toby
that had long gone unsaid. She hoped that she would say the right
things in the right way, that rescue would not make word choices for
her. She wondered how she really felt. Toby Booker on a white horse
did not come into her mind; another comfort found its way.

For
three weeks, with a shepherd along every minute, Kate Osgood moved
within the closed bounds of the Kay-Bar-Kay Ranch as the gang of
hoodlums and hooligans went out and came back on following days. Loud
talk filled in the description of their days; two stage hold-ups, a
bank robbery, one former member of the gang, telling tales, ambushed
on a lonely trail, his mouth shut forever.

At
the end of that third week a rider came into the valley and rode up
to the hitch rail. It was a friendly ranch hand passing by who wanted
to say hello. She heard him talking to one of the gang. “Would you
tell Kate that Joel Haggland wants to say hello. I’m just passing
by. My sister said to say hello too.” And realizing he was talking
to a new hired hand, he said, “You’re a new hand, ain’t cha?
Ain’t seen you afore.”

“Yep.
I came on a few weeks ago when some of the boys just up and finally
rode off after the old gent got killed. Like they didn’t want to
work for no woman boss. I’ll get Kate for you, but she ain’t been
feelin’ too good the last few days. You best wait here.”

Kate’s
shepherd came into the house and said, “There’s a fella name of
Haggland wants to say hello. Take care what you say or the boss, over
in the barn, will drop him right off’n his saddle. You got his life
in your hands now, so do what the boss says. It’s easy for you, I
bet.”

Kate
went out to the porch and said, “I’m glad you came by to say
hello, Joel, but I’ve been feeling poorly lately. I know your
sister wants to come by sometime. Just tell her I’ll let her know
when I’m feeling better. And tell Toby too.” She saw movement at
the barn door and continued, “I do feel poorly, Joel. I better go
inside and rest. I’ll see you another time. I’m sorry about
this.”

She
turned around, walked slowly into the house and closed the door
behind her. From a window she saw Haggland sit his saddle and ride
away from the ranch.

All
was quiet. Her breath came back slowly with the silence. Haggland
turned onto the trail to town and went out of sight.

Control
of her nerves seemed sufficient to get her through the following
days, just as they had for the three past weeks. It was nighttime
when the frayed edges worked a bit of trouble, waiting for the door
to her room to open in the middle of the night. That never happened.

Two
more expeditions left the camp and the gang was gone for two days on
one trip and one day on another trip. They began drinking heavily at
night after the second trip and she knew another bank had been robbed
successfully. All the bragging and descriptions of the robbery came
audibly to her room where she slept fully clothed every night. The
noise level rose, the drinking got louder, and then silence descended
as night crawled into the next day.

The
squeak at the door sent a tingle down her backside. Kate fished for
the horseshoe hidden under her pillow. Her hand circled a grip on one
end of the iron shoe. The floor also sounded the tread of weight as
it whispered a protest. A hand was touching her leg under the
blanket. The smell of whiskey came close to her face. Too close to
her face. With all her might she swung the horseshoe at the smell and
caught the intruder flush on the temple. He collapsed with a groan
onto the edge of the bed and slipped to the floor.

Her
heart was in her throat. She listened for action. The silence
continued, then loud snoring from the rest of the house. The
intruder, of course, was not wearing a gun belt. She took two belts
from her rack and bound his hands and legs and stuffed a kerchief in
his mouth. Wearing moccasins and a light jacket, Kate Osgood slipped
out her bedroom window and made her way toward the tunnel. She did
not go near the horses fearing their noise would wake up one of the
gang; she’d have to walk, hoping to meet somebody on horseback or
in a wagon. Perhaps a stagecoach on the river road or a freighter’s
wagon. Her mind leapt with possibilities.

In
15 minutes she was in the tunnel and unearthing the supplies she
needed. God bless her father! A gun belt and a handgun in a holster
fit snuggly on her waist. A rifle and two boxes of shells came out of
a blanket and canvas that had been set deep into a niche well off the
ground. From a deeper and tighter niche she withdrew a few sticks of
dynamite.

“You
thought of everything, Pa.” The tears came to her eyes in the
darkness. “I know they had something to do with killing you, Pa,”
she said slowly, “so we’ll take care of them right proper. I
don’t know what happened to our ranch hands, but somehow we’ll
find out about that too.”

Two
sticks of dynamite received an extra steady insertion into a crevice
no bigger than her wrist. It was a critical point in the tunnel, at a
spot where her father had spelled out specific instructions. The wall
of rock about her seemed to tremble as the dynamite was placed
between two solid surfaces.

“A
sign of things to come,” she muttered to herself and to the whole
of justifiable Creation, as she patted the stone slabs. A giddy sense
of achievement slid into her being, which she shrugged off as too
early for a celebration. The caution came as a full alert: this was
her only chance and she better make sure of each step and not get too
far ahead of herself. There was no telling what they’d do to her if
things went awry.

The
rock slabs were patted again, as if she sent good luck their way.

“This’ll
break bones, Pa,” she said aloud,” and shake the mountain to
pieces, I swear.” A savage joy tickled Kate Osgood for a moment;
she felt it all the way down to her toes snuggled in the moccasins.
Her imagination was lit up as lightning and thunder and earthly
cataclysm echoed and vibrated with the arm of justice doing its
promised work. Getting even could be as sweet as an early blossom in
the snow or a cool sarsaparilla on the hottest day of the year.

The
giddiness came again.

Kate
positioned herself by the escape route and aimed her rifle into the
narrow aperture, just as shadows of night began to play tag with
false dawn. The gang members could only come one at a time, never two
abreast, never two guns against her one rifle. As directed so long
ago, she lit the fuse that would blast the tunnel into a solid
impasse, and hefted her rifle to take on any of the gang who might
try the escape route.

She
watched the sparks of the fuse as it crawled toward the tunnel, about
30 feet from her position. Breath seemed to hold itself in her chest.

The
whole Earth did not explode, to her surprise. There was a mere thud,
a meager bumping of the Earth. Then a slow rush of sound. A cloud of
dust. And only then, beneath her feet, did the mountain shake.

It
was a dull revelation. She was convinced, however, that the tunnel
was blocked and she’d now have to contend with gang members trying
the escape route. They’d know she had set off a blast to cut down
one route.

“Toby,
that’s you, isn’t it? Oh, my, you came right in time. Right in
time.” The giddy feeling came back. Something else was with it. She
wished she could see Toby’s face. Only parts of it flashed in her
mind.

“My
gosh, Kate, what’s going on in there? I knew something was wrong
when Joel told me what he saw, what he knew, that you were sick and
your old hands had all run off on you. I know no one would do that,
Kate. Not one of those boys would leave you like that. Your pa took
care of that a long time ago.”

“Why
are you here, Toby?”

“Joel
knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t say what. He had a
feeling, and so did I. I’ve been here for two days. Came out a few
other times, but was careful. I always knew about the escape your pa
had found from the valley. The sheriff and the posse will be at the
other end either today or tomorrow. I told him I could hold off an
army at this end for a week if I had to. I’ve been in and out of
there half a dozen times. Even saw you one time the way they were
treating you, but I had to convince the sheriff he ought to do
something. So he’s on the other side and I’m at this end,
waiting. Like I said, been here almost two days this trip. We know
it’s a hooligan gang been doing lots of hold-ups.”

Catching
his breath, obviously happy to know she was okay, Toby declared,
“Nobody knows what happened to your crew, Kate. Not a word. Sheriff
fears the worst. We might never find out. What was that sound I heard
a little while ago?”

“I
set off a couple of sticks of dynamite to block off a second way out
of the valley. My pa had it set up all these years. Kept it right up
to snuff, he did. You ready for company, Toby? They’ll be coming
our way soon.”

“One
at a time, Kate,” Toby said. “That’s all they can do. We got
them covered, you and me, Kate Osgood and Toby Booker. What a pair.”

Kate
Osgood figured Toby Booker was smiling in the dark and she knew the
tingles again.